So, not much action on the blog front due to a hectic schedule, but lots and lots of shooting with the new Sony. We're just shy of 3 months since the A7rii was released and I switched over from the Canon 5dmkiii and so far... so good! The 5d still get's taken on shoots but only as an emergency spare body or dedicated time-lapse camera but it's rarely if ever used. I'll be replacing it with an A7sII as soon as I can (and using the R as Timelapse camera when needed). It'll be interesting to see once having both the R and the S version which would become my main camera of choice...

I've had a variety of shoots of late, from cosy studio shoots, to hectic nightclubs, to dusty construction sites, freezing outdoors and boiling hot offices. The Ninja Assassin has been extremely helpful throughout in bi-passing the overheating issue the camera has when shooting long takes in 4k. If you're going to be shooting testimonials, in unventilated hot rooms then you are going to have issues with overheating unless you record to an external source i.e. the Atomos Ninja Assassin. However for general B-roll gathering i've had no issues.

Battery life is bad, we all know this. It's an hour tops really before i'm onto 10-20% and start to want to swap batteries. As a solution to this I've grabbed a Varavon Battery pack with an A7s coupler (same connections) and a battery clamp. Not the most elegant solution (see photos above for some dodgy bongo tied cable cleanup) so am looking for a way to tidy this up. The battery clamp works well on the Varavon Zeus cage but I have yet to find a placement i'm 100% happy with. Might need to grab an extra handle (I got the package with only 1). Alternatively I'm looking into getting a shoulder rig solution at some point which perhaps could allow mounting the battery to some back rails. Work in progress anyway!

The following was completely shot on the A7rii:

A combination of street shooting, nightclub and skate. Had no real issue with the camera in any of the scenarios. I was really pleased actually with the slow-mo 1080p capturing, coming from a 5d where it was downscaled to 720. 1080p mixes fine with downscaled 4k, much more so than 720 did upscaled. Very intrigued to see the A7sii and it's 100fps at 1080p now!

The lighting of course wasn't ideal, it's a night club after all! But I thought the Sony produced really nice images throughout. I definitely could of lit the initial interview better but sometimes when you only have 5 minutes to grab someone and shoot you have to just run with it!

I'll have more videos posted soon, all different kinds of shooting, as and when I get the all clear from clients and it's publicly available.

A note:

A friend of mine wants to jump straight into the Sony world from Canon and Panasonic and immediately begin shooting for client work. This is fine in theory, all cameras have the same basic principle of exposure and once you work out what format you like and how to white balance, you'll be getting useable images in no time. However, well, I'll just paste what I wrote to him:

"There's lots of quirks with the a7r2. A lot of fumbling in menu systems at first. But also a lot of weird work arounds. For instance, you can't shoot stills in video mode but you can shoot video in stills mode. If you shoot video in stills mode you don't get audio meters and headphone audio monitoring until you hit record. The magnification zoom is way better in stills mode than in video mode. But an external reference monitor could sort this. Super 35 mode is way better for low light noise and moire, but rolling shutter is worse. Full frame moire is barely noticeable, but the noise is quite bad in low light compared to super 35. If you want to do a custom white balance with a grey card you can only do that in stills mode."

There's also probably a ton of other things, but either way I thought it was worth noting. There's definitely a learning curve jumping from another system. Almost three months on and I'm finding out new things out whenever I use it. And i've barely scratched the surface of using S-Log and drilling down into more in-depth customising picture profiles. This is not meant to scare you off but it is the reason I've held onto my Canon all this time just in case!

Last weekend saw the annual Vans shop riot take place at Pioneer Skatepark in St Albans. 27 shop teams from all over the country came to battle it out for the grand prize of £1500 and an expenses paid trip to the European final later this year. The Black Sheep walked away with the top spot, here is what went down.

Vans Classic & London! In-store workshops, live street murals, exhibitions & live music in London. To mark the 1977 debut of the Old Skool as the first ever Vans shoe to feature the iconic sidestripe.Here in lies the inspiration behind Classic & London: a two week takeover of the city bringing together the best in creative talent that London has to offer with a series of Vans in-store workshops, live street murals, exhibitions & live music.